Peaches

Electro-political-sexual-pop revolutionaries are decidedly hard to come by these days, hence why we should savour the magic of Peaches, declares Sandra Marron.

A bird in the hand

A couple of years ago in a Parisian café, an elderly man sitting at the next table passed me a note over breakfast. It read, ‘Trust no Bush but your own’. Impeach my Bush, the title of Peaches’ new album inhabits similar territory and continues where her last album Fatherfucker left off, a humorous in-your-face look at sexuality, gender roles and politics, the crucial difference being that hers, as opposed to my French note passer’s, are all wrapped up in a full on dance party sound.

On tour with her new super girl band which includes ex-members of Hole and JD Samson from Le Tigre, Peaches concedes that yes, the album is an obvious reference to George W. She also explains the second meaning: ‘If you don’t understand Peaches by now, censor me, censor my pussy. By now you must know that I’m not just speaking about sex or being explicit or being overly sexual or anything like that, it’s just about questioning power roles and gender roles and authority and making party music that equalises the balance between men and women.’

Peaches is definitely not the militant feminist that you would expect. She is just as animated and interested in her role of empowering the male species as that of the female. She hopes that men will be relieved to hear her music and believes that she is, in her own words, ‘helping towards a male revolution, a male sexual revolution which I don’t think ever happened. The female sexual revolution happened whether it was by victimisation and victory over that again and again, yet a man never had to question his role in the world,’ she says. Indeed, on her new album, a song like ‘Boys Wanna Be Her’ takes the traditional notion that if a girl is beautiful only girls wanna be her yet boys want to have sex with her and changes it around to say both sexes can admire this fantasy girl and want to be her. Or, as Peaches explains, ‘You have a song like “Two Guys To Every Girl” because in party music I hear a thousand hip hop songs that talk about two women, you know what I mean?’ At which point she bursts into the Jan and Dean song and sings the line ‘two girls for every boy’ to illustrate her point before continuing, ‘but I don’t ever hear about two guys for every girl. And people may be appalled by that, but whatever, it’s me and I think it’s time for people not to be appalled, it should be even.’

Peaches has been put on this earth to make music full of humorous conflict, cultural contradictions and change the idea that women who sing about sexuality in such a way must fall into one of two camps: the man-hating one or the vulnerable, kitten mule-wearing, submissive one. She is also here to make party songs and says, ‘If I want to listen to party music and I want to just have a good time, sometimes I get like, wait a minute why is Led Zeppelin saying “big legged women ain’t got no soul”? I don’t mean it in an ill or mean way, I mean it, like, seriously boys, if we’re gonna shake our tits that you gotta shake your dicks.’